The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [147]
The howling storm of magic that dashed the youngest to whirling bones in their seats forced staff after beautiful enchanted staff to explode, in blasts that shook the room and brought more raw power whirling up into Maelra.
Gadaster roared with soundless, triumphant mirth in her head as she watched Multhas Bowdragon struggle to his feet in the raging storm of her hurled magic, disbelief and rage twisting his face as the runes on his robes burst into flames, one after another, their magic spent vainly trying to protect him.
As their eyes met, hatred kindled in his gaze, though she struggled to plead apologies, tried vainly to weep-and stared back at him in anguish, trying to tell him, to make him see she wasn't… wasn't…
Gadaster guided her limbs and lips through swift, cruel castings that blasted her older cousins where they sat. Uncle Multhas stared at their dyings in shock and rage, and then back at her with his own lips snarling a spell that would surely slay her, would tear her apart limb from bloody limb before his eyes.
So this was Gadaster's cruel trick: She'd slay her family and be slain doing so! Maelra tried to show Multhas with her eyes that she had no willing part in all of this, tried to scream her innocence-and managed only to make a sort of feeble mewing as he leveled his hands to guide the magic that would rend her.
Something flashed and winked off to one side, and Gadaster forced her to turn her head and see what it was. Green, winking sparks danced where Uncle Dolmur and Ithim her father had been-somehow, Dolmur had managed to whisk them away!
She exulted, seizing on the only good thing she could in all of this slaughter, as the death-spell cast by Uncle Multhas failed right in front of her eyes, and Gadaster made her send back a deadly magic that would make the flesh melt slowly off his bones.
Uncle Multhas stared in horror at the bare, glistening bones of his fingers… and then watched them fall away, one by one, as the creeping sorcery that was taking his life climbed up both of his arms…
Multhas looked at Maelra in terror, trying to plead for mercy, and saw the same pleading look in her own eyes, directed back at him. The sorcery gnawed at him with frightening speed.
He died bewildered and despairing. Around his crumbling, toppling form enchanted item after enchanted Bowdragon item burst or melted, surrendering flames of magic that swirled up to join Gadaster's ever hungry, ever-growing spellstorm.
Maelra hung at its glowing heart, trying to whimper and lose her gaze in the flames, and so not see what Gadaster did to her loved ones and their power-but the cold, commanding presence in her head prevented her missing a single moment.
The last Maelra saw, ere she threw herself into his laughter and let the chill, laughing darkness overwhelm her, were many tiny plumes of spell-smoke rising from the eye-gems of the stone faces in the floor, as the last spells of her ancestors were drained away…
And then, mercifully, the darkness took her.
"My Maelra," Ithim Bowdragon whispered, staring unseeing into the darkness.
"She was," Dolmur agreed gravely, "and she was not. 'Tis best, brother, if you believe we're the last living Bowdragons, and she's lost to us."
"I-Kill me, brother, if you have any love left for me at all," Idiim said brokenly. "I've nothing left to live for. All our family thrown down and swept away. All gone, all dark…"
"No, Idiim," the eldest Bowdragon replied in a voice of cold, heavy iron, "there's much for us both still to do. We have a family to refound, and revenge to prosecute for all our lost and fallen. You have the greatest revenge of all."
"I do?"
"Vow with me," Dolmur Bowdragon commanded, as they floated together in the dark refuge where he'd spellsnatched them. "Vow this: That we shall never the, nor rest, until we hunt down and